RALPH WALDO EMERSON AND THE EVER-EVOLVING ART OF ...

situations as something that they and the usual way of behaving in them cannot
account for. (Badiou Ethics 41)
For Badiou, if “objectivity” is all there is, then the human is only an animal, and Emerson
would add that a sense of fate would be particularly strong for this animal. But unlike
most animals, human beings have a choice to be something other than a mortal, being-
for-death animal. Badiou explains,
To be sure, humanity is an animal species. It is mortal and predatory. But neither
of these attributes can distinguish humanity within the world of the living… [With
humans] we are dealing with an animal whose resistance, unlike that of a horse,
lies not in his fragile body but in his stubborn determination to remain what he is
– that is to say, precisely something other than a victim, other than a being-for-
death, and thus: something other than a mortal being. An immortal: this is what
the worst situations that can be inflicted upon Man show him to be, in so far as he
distinguishes himself within the varied and rapacious flux of life. (Badiou Ethics
11-12)
Badiou detranscendentalizes immortality by making it a feature of the active intellect.
Because human beings are animals, their mortality can be defined as the primal urge to
satisfy the conditions through which organic being is sustained. Morality, in other words,
is seeking food, shelter, sex, and other basic needs. Immortality, by contrast, resides in
the thought that inspires an animal to push against obtaining its basic needs towards a
larger idea. In this way, the animal becomes literally “not mortal”, and, for Badiou, this
contains the potential for an immortal human subject. However, as the terms imply,
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